Yukari was confused. What has she said wrong? The Nishizumi House, and Black Forest was widely acclaimed as one of the most effective Senshado teams in Asia, if not a bit prone to taking less than moral actions as demanded by their code of conduct enforced by their more senior members. To be accepted into their academy and team was considered a great honour as far as she knew. But Lucius-san here was seething at the very prospect of his senpai being part of the Black Forest Peak Academy. Did she touch a nerve? His mouth was repeatedly opening and closing, as if trying to find the right words and failing. After one of the longest minute that ever passed, Lucius-san simply said, "Let's just say we find their morals absolutely despicable," and eased on the brakes, once again driving the two of the back to the hangars.
To Yukari's surprise, everyone else had already arrived and parked their vehicles in their appropriate hangars. Nishizumi-dono and Takebe-san ran towards their tank as soon as it stopped moving, with Reizei-san following the two in a steady step. Apparently she had taken longer than expected to return. Much longer.
In the end, Yukari had to endure barrages of concerned questions as she repeatedly assured them that no, the two of them were never in any particular danger; no, they never got lost; and yes, they did have a watch with them, just that neither Lucius nor she ever thought of actually checking the time. Even after all those assurances, Nishizumi-dono could not hide a look of concern for her wellbeing. It was both heartening and shameful to see; Yukari felt happy that Nishizumi-dono cared that much about her, but she felt ashamed that she made her commander worried for no good reason. Off to her side, Takebe-san stood, her face a cross between curiosity and mischief, the latter of which Yukari had grown to fear for some strange reason. Perhaps because that expression only ever appeared when Takebe-san had spotted a particularly charming boy to go after.
"So Yukarin," Saori started, "if you weren't in any trouble, why did you two take so long to return?"
"As I said earlier, we lost track of time while-"
"So why did you lose track of the time in the first place? Was there someone going on between the two of you? Something…you didn't want the rest of us to know?"
It took a moment for Yukari to process what was just said. When she did, she felt her face boil up. She could imagine her face turning into a lamp, and any reminder of that pumped new heat through her.
"O, of course not! I, I, I cou-could never…" Her voice shrunk and shrunk so much by the time she managed to get "never" out, it was more accurate to say her lips were making odd shapes rather than to say she was talking.
A more solid response came from Lucius, who chose this moment to fade into the conversation. "Nothing particularly eventful happened in transit. I just drove slower than the rest because I didn't want the panzer slipping in the snow. Now, if you will excuse me, I think I will sign off and give myself some well-deserved rest. Oh, and please send my regards to Ms. Isuzu; colds are a nasty thing to catch."
Saori pouted in disappointment. "I hoped someone among us was able to get a boyfriend here, even if it wasn't me…" Miho sighed in disbelief.
Yukari could slowly feel her face cooling down. Good thing Lucius-san explained what happened so clearly or she would have faced quite the misunderstanding. I mean, he was a good person; he never antagonized anyone. But to think of him like…that?
Yukari continued to observe how Vimy Ridge Academy trained. Her friends often joined her, but found other things to do after a while of watching, leaving Yukari to spend as much time on her passion of Senshado as she wished. She watched them doing their usual combat and communication training, in combination to a few others. She also, with Lucius-san's permission, delved into the club's archives and watched the records of their more recent matches with as much enthusiasm as if she was watching a gripping movie. Actually, for her, it was a gripping movie. She saw over and over again Vimy Ridge using various tactics to bring down a storm of mass confusion into the enemy, and tore them to pieces at knife-fighting range in a big mess of brawls while they were trying to reorganize themselves into half-decent positions. Superior decentralized and individual leadership allowed this; when the enemy was trying to hold them off just long enough to receive new orders in hopes that that would change everything for the better, each individual tank of Vimy Ridge used their own judgement with confidence to make good movements and good kills. A…"pell-mell battle", Lucius-san once said.
She also saw how all the schools in North America (not America, as Lucius-san, and pretty much everyone else in the school vehemently corrected every time one of her schoolmates tried to shorten the name that way) built their lineups of vehicles. Almost every one of them was built around a solid group of medium tanks. From there, all the differences sprouted up. Some, like Vimy Ridge, attached some artillery for fire support. Others brought a group of light tanks for scouting and harassment of the enemy into making foolish moves. Yet others brought a handful of heavy tanks –Yukari was honestly surprised by this, after having been exposed to North America's school of thought for some time- to anchor an offence or defence, or tank destroyers to bring bigger tank-killing guns in smaller bodies.
She even saw one or two deploy ground-attack aircraft such as…Typhoons, IL-2s, and a B-25J. But when a team deployed aircraft, it seemed they were never allowed to bring more than two of them because of a quirk in their rules. Also, no one ever deployed dedicated fighters to counter them. Perhaps no one was too worried about them? After all, almost none of the attacks ever managed to hit something vital to a tank's well-being. They did, however, instill panic to the crews of the tank that was being shot at. Most simply ditched their vehicle, or surrendered by voluntarily raising the white flag, with the more stalwart of crews remaining calm, and escaping largely unscathed. But since quite a few people were so terrified, she discounted that theory. Another rule, perhaps?
Now that Yukari thought about it, North American tactics really seemed to revolve around causing mass panic and routs, at which point they could be hunted down with little danger to the attackers. Only the means to instill panic really differed; tank shocks, air attacks, artillery and rocket barrages, and ambushes were some of the more common.
Speaking of artillery, Yukari wondered how students were even able to be proficient at indirect fire. Shooting was hard enough when you could see what you were shooting at; but to shoot at a moving target at long ranges without being able to see them? Questions, questions, questions…
After finishing the last of the records, Yukari emerged from the archive room with an empty jug of coffee, and the mother-of-all dark circles under her eyes. She yawned, and for the first time she could remember in a while, looked at a nearby clock, at which point her jaw slightly dropped. She spent more or less the entire day in the room! She also remembered her friends, including Nishizumi-dono, having joined her for the first few videos, but they all seemed to have left at some point. When did they leave?
Her stomach rumbled; Yukari was relieved that no one was nearby to hear it. She did forget to eat during her record-viewing session. She decided to head to the cafeteria; she remembered there being a small student-run shop selling drinks and pastries until midnight.
When she arrived, Yukari was certainly surprised to see other people in the cafeteria, especially when she spotted Lucius-san amongst the group. Odd, she expected a proper person like him to already be asleep. Even odder that he was wearing something other than semi-formal; he was clad in completely bland slippers, shorts, and short-sleeve shirt. His hair was braced up with a…a plastic headband?! Now that was just wrong! The headband was a cheap, dull, crude, black horseshoe-shaped plastic product, worthy of being sold at a variety store. Nothing that screamed any gender identity –in fact, it was almost invisible-but what Yukari witnessed here was totally incompatible with Lucius-san of every other time she was with him.
Lucius noticed her hesitating at the door to the cafeteria, and called out, "Hey, it's Yukari! Come join us if you want!" His company of friends, composed of a generous mix of boys and girls, gestured for about the same thing. Yukari complied, taking an empty seat directly in front of him, her body completely stiff and awkward. She suddenly found the design of the table to be very interesting, from the smoothness of the finish to the fine grain of the wood.
"So, what did you think of all the videos? Did you see anything interesting?" Lucius-san started, in a casual tone that was totally alien to Yukari's ears.
Nevertheless she answered, "They were very interesting. A lot of tactics seem to amount to causing maximum panic among the other team before joining battle."
"Yeah, that more or less sums up how teams run here. Still-"
At this point Yukari remembered her question on the artillery crews. "Umm…just how are you even able to use artillery? I still think students should not have been able to understand the math involved with indirect fire…" The tips of her ears started to glow red upon realizing she cut off whatever Lucius-san was about to say in her own excitement.
Lucius simply shrugged. "Well, it certainly is more problematic when they are try to shoot at individual vehicles, it gets complicated very quickly. Which is why we don't. Our artillery is used in massed barrages at larger formations to cause havoc. Lucky if any of them actually hit something, no harm done if they don't as long as they land in the area of the enemy. Even then it's pretty complicated. So the artillery crew tryouts generally take place a few years earlier than other positions, and for the first year, only learn the math involved with an actual gunner from the military. First year crews don't even touch the launchers until the later few months of the training."
A new voice cut in, "You know, I still think it would be better for the newbies to have more interactions with the physical pieces in their first year of training. I mean…"
The conversation continued between the new voice and Lucius-san, but Yukari blocked them out, her question more or less being answered, although it did raise a few more. Instead, she leaned to her left, whispering to Andrew-san, Lucius-san's gunner to whom she was introduced to following her first battle against Vimy Ridge, "Why does Lucius-san look like…well, this? He is usually so sharply dressed when around other people. And the headband?"
Andrew-san raised an eyebrow, before forming his lips into a small "oh…" He then answered, "You haven't yet seen how he is in his private moments, haven't you?"
"P-p-p-private moments?" Implications after implications sped through Yukari.
"Well, less private and more…informal. He's one of those people who believe in maintaining a professional look at "work", and releasing themselves once off-duty."
"So he was showing off a fake character?"
"No, no, no. They're both his genuine character. He likes to think of his time as public and private. He maintains politeness and sharp clothing when at "work" so he does not step on any toes. And he does like what he wears at those times, but you have to admit, they are bulky. Same with that personality; it is tiring to maintain in the face of the many idiots that sometimes are around him. So when not working, he throws off all those bulky things, and keeps to what is comfortable without a care for appearance for the sake of having a good rest and a fun spare time."
The next day, Yukari once again found herself in Vimy Ridge Tankery Club's archives, with Saori, Hana, Mako, Miho, and Lucius, but this time for a different reason. The night Yukari encountered Lucius-san in his casual form, he mentioned having to dive into the old records "once again" the next day, courtesy of Mary's orders. He asked for help from everyone who was with him, but they all suddenly remembered lost promises for that day.
"Uhh, about that…I'm supposed to wait for a call at that time."
"I have a summer job interview scheduled for that time tomorrow."
"I'm supposed to be in a game tournament that day all day."
Even Lucius-san's friend Andrew refused, the most bluntly. "Yeah…I saw the archive. I experienced the dive. There is no way I'm going back in there. You're on your own there, buddy"
Lucius-san released a barrage of deep sighs after everyone save her evacuated the area shortly after that, leaving behind a mess of chairs. She didn't want to sound pitiful, but….it was a pitiful sight to see. So she told him that she would help him with the task. Upon hearing this, the rest of her friends decided to join in as well, not content to leave just Yukari to suffer the universal monster that was known as paperwork. No, they would all join her, and more people would lighten the workload for everybody.
Indeed, the work had progressed quite quickly; Lucius-san was pleasantly surprised at how much faster the work went. Normally this would have been impossible, considering none of the girls, except maybe Isuzu-dono could read English in a great detail, but in this instance, all they had to look for were one of two stamp marks at the bottom of each paper, reading either "scrapped", or "sold". Yukari even heard him mumbling something about forcing people to help him the next time at one point. Now they were just down to one pile of papers, which was divided into stacks of ten for each person.
The content of the papers were definitely continental in variety, although they all were related to Tankery. Items discussed ranged from ammunition to periscope glasses to entire tanks, judging from the photographs attached to each document. The tanks themselves wildly varied as well; apparently Vimy Ridge Academy used to have vehicles from AEC Armoured Cars and the Ram tanks to even a Churchill AVRE. A few Sextons Self-Propelled Artillery as well. Too bad they were all either sold as scrap metal-some vehicles came to violate newer regulations, like the AVRE and the Sextons, Lucius-san mentioned- or as whole pieces to others; Ooarai would certainly have been happy to purchase any of the tanks Vimy Ridge got rid of at one point or another.
Mako spoke, breaking Yukari's thought. "There's a paper without any of the stamps on it. There aren't even any signatures on it."
"Ah, thank you. Would you mind if you gave that to me? I need to see what fell through the paperwork and see if it needs attention," Lucius-san responded, back to his polite and formal self during the day. Mako handed the guilty paper over; she couldn't read any of it. Not only was it in English, the handwriting was almost unreadable. Yukari got a glimpse of the attached photo, but it flashed by too quickly for her to identify.
Lucius-san took a brief glance, and furrowed his eyebrows. He read it again, this time taking more time, blinking his eyes in slight disbelief. And again. And again. "The KV-85?"
AN:
Severstal, honestly, I wasn't thinking about that side of the requirements when I first wrote this. I tried to write into this chapter my justifications, and I hope you find them acceptable. Also, when I first started out, I thought learning indirect-fire has to be easier than learning to dogfight or to go on ground strikes in fighter planes and actually hope to hit something.
Aga04, I know artillery isn't overpowered. Big damage roll, but those soft stats are anything but soft on arty drivers. I was only trying to convey the typical WoT player's reaction to getting oneshot by arty (the gamer girls are heavily implied to play WoT...) I'm much more lenient in reactions. Arties get persecuted enough without one more person jumping into the bandwagon, and it's just a game. No need to get OMGWTFUNOOBUNISTALLYOUSCUMBAG about it. Also, note GuP's liberal use of "carbon lining" xD But seriously, in my mind the Cromwell was only trying to immobilize the Pz. IV, so the commander wasn't being too reckless about the speed when approaching to ram.
And yes, I said persecuted.